The Proud Ignorance of Iraq War Hawks

The problem here is not that advocates of the Iraq invasion have failed to learn its lessons. It is that opponents of that war, starting with Obama, have learned the wrong ones.

One lesson from Iraq that many war opponents have learned is that the U.S. shouldn’t be waging unnecessary wars that serve no discernible U.S. interest. That isn’t the wrong lesson to learn. It’s one that Diehl simply ignores, which is probably why he never really addresses how it would serve U.S. interests to go to war in Syria. Another lesson is that forcibly collapsing a regime creates far more instability and chaos than leaving it in place would. There is no likely scenario in which hastening regime collapse would have limited the loss of life and displacement of civilians in Syria. After all, the collapse of a regime doesn’t mean that fighting between different communities will stop, so even an intervention that felled the regime wouldn’t necessarily halt the conflict or limit the suffering of the civilian population. Sooner or later, the same people who said that the U.S. wouldn’t have to take responsibility for stabilizing a post-Assad Syria would be insisting that the U.S. do just that.

Everything in Diehl’s argument ultimately hinges on the assumption that U.S. military intervention in Syria would have been limited, easy, and effective:

As in the Balkans — or Libya — the limited use of U.S. airpower and collaboration with forces on the ground could have quickly put an end to the Assad regime 18 months ago, preventing 60,000 deaths and rise of al-Qaeda. It could still save the larger region from ruin.

It is doubtful that this would be quick, and it is also doubtful that this could be achieved by a “limited use” of airpower. Comparisons with Balkan interventions conveniently omit many of the factors that made those interventions “work” as well as they did. Even the Libyan war took eight months, and that was against a regime that was considerably less powerful and much more isolated internationally. Military interventions almost always take longer than expected, and that’s always true for interventions that are sold to the public by emphasizing how low-cost and easy they will be. Take an interventionist’s original estimate for how long a given military action will take, and then multiply it by ten or fifteen and you’ll be closer to the real figure. One of the reasons no one trusts the promises of Iraq war hawks is that they were promising a swift and easy war in 2003, too, and all that many of them can say after an eight-year debacle is that it “hasn’t turned out, so far, as we war supporters hoped.”

As for Diehl’s account of the costs of Iraq, it is not surprising that even now he understates the number of Iraqis driven out of their country and displaced inside it, as well as reducing the overall fiscal costs of the war to “hundreds of billions” instead of the trillions that it will be over the long term. One obvious lesson that everyone should have learned from Iraq is that hawks are always unduly optimistic about the cost, duration, and difficulty of waging war, and they are always far too confident in the efficacy of hard power, which causes them to believe that military action is advisable far more often than it really is. When it concerns starting an international war, which is what Diehl is proposing that the U.S. do, it is far better to err on the side of caution.

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15 Responses to The Proud Ignorance of Iraq War Hawks

Too true. What happens if US defeats Assad, only to have the dominant political force that follows, likely Sunni, initiate some kind ethnic cleansing of Shia in the aftermath?

Would the interventions still be swift and cheap if boots need to be put on the ground to prevent a systematic slaughter like that?

This hardly strikes me as an impossible scenario. So while life in Syria is not all wine and roses, in fact it’s an ongoing tragedy, the ramifications of US intervention are not clear. Not for the Syrians, and not for the responsibilities of the US should they become involved.

There’s viable cases for some military interventions, but becoming involved in a civil war in the middle east is probably not one of them.

In Diehl we have another “journalist” discussing issues of which he has not a slightest clue about, other than rubbing shoulders with top military brass in D.C. , and memorizing “cool” military lingo later to be used in his pathetic excuse of an “analysis”. I rub shoulders sometimes with a number of wonderful surgeons and anesthesiologists–that does not make me a specialist in the field, let alone somebody who has the right to express an opinion on the subject matter.

There is a wonderful satirical short story by renown Russian humorist Arkady Averchenko (1881-1925), it is called “The Specialist In The Military Affairs”. It is one page long but describes succinctly the shallowness, bordering on stupidity of this breed of “journalists”. One of those “military analysts” in the story has a background in….shoes and constantly describes the state of the Italian and Austrian Armies, including their geographical positions, from the point of view of their….you guessed it….shoes and boots. I wish this story could be translated in English and sent to all those Diehls and other “specialists in military affairs”. I doubt, however, that they will learn anything from it, they didn’t from far more realistic and thus tragic affair of Iraq War. Unless we are talking here about simplest psychiatric phenomenon of suppressing own memories in a face of unmitigated disaster in blood in treasure that Iraq War is, those people are simply not capable of learning.

One lesson from Iraq that many war opponents have learned is that the U.S. shouldn’t be waging unnecessary wars that serve no discernible U.S. interest. That isn’t the wrong lesson to learn. It’s one that Diehl simply ignores, which is probably why he never really addresses how it would serve U.S. interests to go to war in Syria.

One might still easily end up on the blogger’s side on the fundamental question – to intervene or not to intervene – but Diehl’s thesis statement reads as follows: “Yet in the absence of U.S. intervention, Syria is looking like it could produce a much worse humanitarian disaster and a far more serious strategic reverse for the United States.” Accepting for sake of argument the blogger’s apparent position that preventing or reducing humanitarian disaster is not a “discernible U.S. interest,” we can focus on the second claim. Contrary to the blogger’s assertion, Diehl does not “simply ignore” U.S. interests, but makes what he clearly believes to be a strong claim regarding them. The rest of his piece fills out that claim with specific arguments which the blogger “simply,” and to my eye somewhat proudly, ignores.

Diehl makes no real attempt to support his claim that there will be a greater “strategic reverse” for the U.S. than Iraq if the conflict in Syria continues without direct American intervention. I said he ignores the lesson that “the U.S. shouldn’t be waging unnecessary wars that serve no discernible U.S. interest.” Diehl fails to demonstrate why an American war in Syria is necessary to secure U.S. interests, and in my view he doesn’t even try very hard.

As in the Balkans — or Libya — the limited use of U.S. airpower and collaboration with forces on the ground could have quickly put an end to the Assad regime 18 months ago, preventing 60,000 deaths and rise of al-Qaeda. It could still save the larger region from ruin.

This is the phrase from the original article by Diehl, which could, indeed, have given aneurism to Colin Powell or, for that matter, any military professional. The reference is, of course, to Powell’s famous response to Madeleine Albright’s “views” on the use of the armed forces. BTW, if memory serves me right, it was Albright, not Clinton, as Diehl states, who came up with the “indispensable nation”. But the issue here is this: “limited use”?? Really?? And can Diehl come up here with numbers describing operational tempo, force size and structure needed for possible operation, can he come up with the objectives?? The hard one is to justify (that is where operational research comes in big time) risks. So easy–”limited” and I wonder why people go to military academies, I guess they just move there some model planes, carriers and tanks on the board. Well, on the computer screen–it is 21-st century after all.

Here are 8 reasons, off the top of my head, why Diehl is dangerously wrong:

1. We have no vital interests in Syria.
2. If we throw out Assad, there is little likelihood that we will like his successor, or the squabbling factions that succeed him.
3. Wars generally last longer and have more undesirable consequences than anticipated.
4. We learn from history that we don’t understand the Near East very well.
5. An escalated war will harm the Christians and other minorities of Syria.
6. We can’t afford it.
7. With East Asia heating up, implicating treaty allies, intervention in Syria would be a dangerous distraction.
8. There is no legal basis for intervention in Syria. indeed, the UN Charter forbids it.

Jackson Diehl clearly would prefer the American people not recognise the fact the US squandered (or will have squandered) at least three trillion dollars on an illegal and unnecessary war in Iraq. Self-inflicted catastrophe.

Mr. Larison: In making a series of claims within a strategic concept, Diehl clearly acknowledges the underlying question of “discernible U.S. interests,” by focusing on, arguing, and evidencing the ones that he “discerns.”

The difference here is, I believe, in strategic concepts – possibly even a different implicit understanding of what the U.S. and therefore its interests even are or should be. Within Diehl’s familiar framework, for example, an Al Qaeda affiliate in a strengthened position in Syria would be deemed highly problematic. More generally, for Diehl a decline in U.S. influence in the region ought to be avoided if possible. In other words, the “interests” that concern Diehl at least qualify as “discernible,” and his op-ed at least qualifies as an “attempt to support his claim.”

You may well possess a superior or even a far superior concept, but refusing to acknowledge that his arguments are even arguments at all, that the interests he claims to discern are even interests at all, implies that the U.S. has no conceivable interest in the region whatsoever, that it is or would be a matter of complete indifference to the U.S. who runs Syria or Iraq, or how, or how other nations and non-state actors are influenced or react. Is there any point at which the political-military developments within the Middle East, or with any region of the world beyond the U.S. homeland, under your concept, can be of sufficient concern to the U.S. to justify intervention or consideration of intervention? If so, then Diehl’s framework should at least be comprehensible and arguable. His concerns could be acknowledged and weighed against others. If not, then the logical consequence would be an anti-interventionism that turns into just the kind of “isolationism,” or what is actually meant by the term, that you are frequently at pains to deny as a fair characterization of your outlook.

If the United States dismantled all its military bases in the Middle East, curtailed all foreign aid to all parties, and came home, the oil we need would be sold to us at market prices and there would be no “strategic reverse,” at least not for the man and woman in the American street. So uttered James Burnham and I find no cause to disagree.

Diehl is a bad writer, whose bad writings can contain awful implications. The war, he asserts, “hasn’t turned out, so far, as we war supporters hoped“. Even if one thinks that Iraq may become a liberal democracy, and even if one thinks that this may justify a decade of carnage, the war supporters surely hoped to build a liberal democracy without the carnage? Does that give them too much credit?

He then writes that Al Qaeda in Iraq endured a “decisive defeat”. Yet, somehow, they are experiencing a “revival”. Does the Washington Post have a definition of “decisive” that I am not acquainted with?

Diehl blunders on, claiming that Obama has “ruled out…more modest intervention[s]“. Among examples of these he references Libya. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that Obama was President in 2011.

If there is a case to be made for attacking the Assad regime, the practicalities of which Mr. Diehl never addresses, it will not be made by him. It is a fitting tribute to his column that John McCain thinks it is “must-read”.

War mongers are in it for the money. Barstool Napoleons like Diehl resemble the prostitutes who tag along behind troop movements.

Arguing against his drek lends it a dignity it does not deserve.

Washington’s imperial wars of aggression serve only one purpose. To make a few rich men richer. All the suffering and dying. All the destruction and dislocation. All of it is by design to enrich the Oligarchy. The perpetrators of these crimes are evil or the word has no meaning.